Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”

 –Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff  (1873-1943)   

Melancholy Man.  It was written on his face and woven into his music: Rachmaninoff was a melancholy man.  His early life reads like a “what else can go wrong?” narrative.  Son of a wealthy aristocrat, he watched as his father squandered the family’s money.  Two sisters died of illness and his father abandoned the family. Rachmaninoff would later describe his father as “a wastrel, a compulsive gambler, a pathological liar and a skirt chaser.” 

As a boy, Rachmaninoff struggled academically largely due to his unhappy home life.  He was threatened with expulsion from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which he had entered at the age of 10.  He transferred to, and eventually graduated from, the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied counterpoint with Sergei Taneyev.  His early compositions were moderately successful.  Then came the premier of his first symphony in 1897, which was a crushing disaster attributed to a drunken conductor (Alexander Glazunov) and searing critical reviews; one likened the work to the “ten plagues of Egypt.”  He fell into a crippling depression that lasted three years, during which he was barely able to work.  He entered psychotherapy with Dr. Nikolai Dahl and began to recover.  He started working again and completed his second piano concerto, which he dedicated to Dr. Dahl.  The concerto, his most popular work, earned him the Glinka Award.  With increasing success and improved finances, he married and had two daughters. 

A Bitter Farewell.  In 1917 political unrest gripped Russia.  With the country descending into revolution and social order disintegrating, he and his family bid farewell to his beloved homeland, which he would never see again.  Following a brief stay in Scandinavia, they boarded a steamer for America.  Rachmaninoff would achieve success in the West as his fame as a pianist and composer spread, but he would struggle with depression for the rest of his life.

Towering Figure.  Few pianists could look him in the eye.  At a reported 6’6,” Rachmaninoff towered over most people and is considered the tallest composer in history.  It is said he had the largest hands of any pianist, affording him a phenomenal octave-and-a-half reach. 

Reluctant Pianist.  Rachmaninoff arrived in the U.S. on borrowed money and in need of a job.  Regarded as the finest pianist of his time, he began a reluctant career as a concert pianist and recording artist, made easier by his exceptional ability to sight-read and memorize.  With financial security came the freedom to dedicate more time to composition.  He was a superb melodist.  His music is strongly Russian and individualistic, described as moody, melancholy, dark and brooding.  With his extraordinary technique he was able to expand the expressive possibilities of the piano; consequently, some of his works are among the most technically demanding in the repertoire.  Rachmaninoff died of cancer in Beverly Hills in 1943 at the age of 69.

Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915)

Stellar Student.  Dubbed “the Russian Bach,” and also “the Russian Brahms,” Sergei Taneyev was a renowned pianist, theorist and composer whose works are known for their “finely wrought contrapuntal textures combined with romantic harmony” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Like his counterpoint pupil Sergei Rachmaninoff, Taneyev was born into an aristocratic family and exhibited musical talent from an early age. He entered the Moscow Conservatory at the age of nine, where he studied composition with Tchaikovsky and piano with Nikolai Rubenstein.  A stellar student, he was the first to be awarded the Great Gold Medal at the conservatory; Rachmaninoff was, incidentally, the third.  One of the finest pianists of his generation, he was chosen for the Moscow debut of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. 

Teacher, Director, Pianist.  When Tchaikovsky resigned his post at the Moscow Conservatory in 1878, Taneyev was appointed as a teacher of harmony and, later, piano and composition.  He subsequently served as the director of the Conservatory from 1885 to 1889 and continued to teach until the outbreak of the 1905 revolution.  Taneyev left the conservatory, resumed his career as a concert pianist and devoted more time to composition.   A recognized authority of counterpoint who taught the subject to Rachmaninoff at the Moscow Conservatory, he continued working on his massive two-volume treatise on the subject, a project that would take 20 years. 

Master Contrapuntalist.  Taneyev had limited interest in Russian folksong and was not a student of the Russian school.  He was drawn more to the music of the West, particularly Bach, Brahms and Schumann.  He was more conservative and austere than his Russian teachers, inclined toward Baroque-style polyphony and counterpoint.  “His approach to composition was meticulous, painstaking and notable for its elegant command of technique” (Nigel Simeone, 2017). Being a master contrapuntalist, his compositions were strictly structured with near mathematical precision.  Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that he would expect Taneyev’s compositional style to produce a “dry and academic” result, yet he found the music expressively beautiful.   The serious-minded Taneyev did not hesitate to criticize the works of others, including those of his close friend Tchaikovsky whose fourth symphony, he observed, contained too much ballet music.  “And what’s wrong with that?” Tchaikovsky is said to have retorted.    

Sofia’s Idée Fixe.  He was a close friend of Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sofia, and was a regular visitor at the couple’s home.  He played chess with the writer, who introduced him to bicycling, a pastime he pursued with enthusiasm.  Taneyev set a Tolstoy poem to music in the cantata, “John of Damascus.”  The composer became the unfortunate object of an uncomfortable infatuation by Sofia, a sentiment he did not appear to return.  He never married and seemed never to have had a close relationship with anyone except his nanny, in whose care he remained throughout his life.  In April 1915 he attended the funeral for Scriabin and contracted pneumonia. During his recovery he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 58. 

Rachmaninoff:  Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19

One of the first major works composed as Rachmaninoff was emerging from his depression following the disastrous premier of his first symphony, the opus 19 sonata was completed in November 1901.  The composer did not refer to this piece as a cello sonata, preferring the more descriptive “Sonata for Cello and Piano.”  Sometimes described as a piano sonata with cello accompaniment, the sonata treats the piano as an equal, with most of the themes introduced by the piano and elaborated by the cello. The premier of the work on December 2, 1901, featured cellist Anatoliy Brandukov, to whom the work was dedicated, with the composer on the piano.  Barely a month earlier, the composer’s enormously popular second piano concerto debuted, overshadowing the sonata. The piano part, not merely an accompaniment, is technically challenging, like most of Rachmaninoff’s works for the instrument.  The four-movement piece is Russian Romanticism at its finest, exploring the full intensity and expressiveness of the cello.  This was Rachmaninoff’s last chamber work, as he turned principally to works for orchestra and for solo piano.  The sonata is considered one of the significant cello works of the 20^th century. 

Taneyev: Quintet for Piano and Strings in G minor, Op. 30 (for 2 violins, viola, cello & piano)

The expansive Quintet for Piano and Strings, composed in 1910-11 after Taneyev left his teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory, was described as “the crowning glory of Taneyev’s chamber works with piano, a work permeated with profound thought and inward pathos” (Cobbett, 1963).  The Daily Telegraph lauded “the elevated intelligence and romantic intensity of Taneyev’s writing, laid out here on an almost epic scale. . . .”   At nearly three-quarters of an hour in length, the four-movement piece illustrates why Taneyev is generally regarded as one of the great musical architects of all time; its meticulous structure is permeated with vivid imagery, lyricism, and dramatic tension.  Considered one of Romanticism’s masterpieces of Russian literature for chamber ensemble, the quintet makes high technical demands on the performers, which may explain why this powerful work isn’t more frequently performed. 

-Program notes by Sara Grossman